GIS EM4 Barringer Lilburne 2000

Conference paper describing how South Island mean monthly soil temperature surfaces were created using standard geostatistical techniques. These methods help to account for the majority of topographic variability at high spatial resolutions where topographic influences dominate spatial patterns of climate. By using purposefully sampled data we gained useful knowledge about topographic variation in soil temperature, but the data were not well suited to some interpolation methods. Partial thin plate splines produced the most accurate long-term mean monthly and specific month/year soil temperature surfaces, but multiple linear regression also provided a simple and robust method for soil temperature interpolation because the data were not strongly spatially dependent.